The present invention relates to the handling of single link chain bags, and is more particularly concerned with maintaining such bags against skewing while being handled, such as for storage and shipment from a place where the bags are made to a place where the bags are to be filled and separated from the chain.
Bags of the type being dealt with here are made from plastic film and closed or sealed at a bottom end and at opposite sides and provided with an openable top arranged to be closed by means of separable and reclosable fastener means, sometimes referred to as zipper, of the tongue and groove type. This may be extruded integrally with the web material or film of the bags or may be separately extruded and then secured to the bag material by heat or fusion sealing or adhesive, depending upon whether the materials of the bag and zipper are compatible or not.
In any event, for convenience in filling the bags in filling machines, the bags are desirably connected together in a chain fashion, that is, in side-by-side continuous series. By way of example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,490,959 chain bags connected by links at the upper and lower end portions of the bags are fed to and filled in an automatic bag filling machine. In another example of bag filling machine as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,514,962, the chain bags are connected only by links at the top ends of the bags.
Unless the bag chains are fed to the filling machine in a continuous production line wherein the bag chain is fabricated and, without significant delay, run through a bag filling station, it is necessary to store and possibly ship or otherwise handle the bags in a storage mode. One manner of storing such bags is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,416,376, wherein the bags are packed in a generally fan fold boxed dispensing package.
On the other hand, it may be more convenient to feed the chain of bags to a filling machine from a more convenient storage mode, such as from a reel or roll. However, a problem that arises in reeling a single link bag chain is that the bags may tend to skew relative to one another and wrinkle and interfere with smooth winding of the bag chain on itself. The present invention solves that problem.